Guest Blog: Laika Theatre

Prior to jumping up on our feet, we felt the need to delve into relevant research and share our findings to form a pool of text/images/people, to give our content substance. For each member, we feel it most important to highlight the ongoing and universal issue of children’s experience in War, through the creative medium of theatre, but further by through our social media. Our findings show that with the Western World’s coverage of conflicts, particularly those of the Middle East, that we now have more access to videos, stories and images than ever before. Our wonderful John has put this at the forefront of our social media run up to #Sprint16 by engaging with other child/War related articles and global events on Twitter.

Step one of our process involved many hours talking through our sources which cover topics; such as:

– Child Soldiers of LRA/ Congo – ISIS’ dependence on child recruits – Absurdity/ caricature of dictators – Syrian regime and child experiences – America/ Japan/ Germany accounts from World War II – A series of verbatim texts from company member Chris’s uncle And much more…Step two of our rehearsal process involved getting up on our feet and exploring our materials using various exercises and ideas. Our sessions begin with a game, followed by a ‘jam’ of ideas, whereby we list the ideas which we feel most pressing to develop.

Exercises have included -Viewpoints: Using movement, props, text and music to provide a framework for creating sequences and moments – Creating music and soundscapes inspired by World War II music – Creating images through object animation

After a day in the rehearsal studio, we found the skeleton of our show by writing down our fondest/ strongest stories and moments on blank cards, and deciding the best sequence/order to follow. This was done whilst being mindful of our content and how we could structure it to show both the light and dark shades of Children’s experience of playtime, during Wartime.

We’ve been very fortunate to get hold of our costumes through a Church hire and we’ve been busy designing our posters. This weekend we’re back in the studio, and we can’t wait!